Some time back my friend Rajeev sent me a forward. About life in the corporate world. Around the same time I too had been mulling over the days I spent in the corporate world. I have straddled with equal ease, now I realize, Public and Private sector, Banking and Non- Banking. I found life interesting, worthless, comical, idiosyncratic, meaningless, rewarding …….you name it. It is much the same everywhere.
When I left the protected world of Public Sector Banking and jumped into the unknown Private – Proprietary, de facto, as closely held by the promoters- I was warned by many well meaning friends that I wouldn’t last long. My answer to them was – what choice I had? - and who would have thought I would have to walk out of the safe havens of the ‘nothing will affect’ Premier Government Bank. In the circumstances that I left the cocoon and jumped into world of the unknown, I was charged with a desire for retribution and determination to prove a point… that there is life outside the PSU, worth giving a try.
I left the ‘cocoon’ for all the wrong reasons. I had just been promoted to the next higher grade- many a peer fell by the side- which could open to me at least two more promotions before superannuation. I thought that was a great reward for my work but the local higher ups thought otherwise. I was dispatched, as it was the wont, to a distant ‘foreign’ land, the North-East. But I never imagined that I was to be the scapegoat in a three way tug of war of the State Government, the management and the Officer’s Union in finding a person to head a branch in a disturbed capital town. Parochial considerations would also have played a role. To the utter disappointment (surprise!) of the contending parties I chose not to play sport. I refused to be the sitting duck and dodged the posting to my best. When I found I had unwittingly become the fourth contending party and there was no escape, I put in my papers. Back to square one, the other parties, with the onerous task of finding another potential victim. And me, out into the wild. That in short is the story of my straying out.
During my last years in the Bank I had opportunities to be exposed to new management theories. Consultants were dime a dozen. The sleeping giant was set to wake up. Transformation and Business Process Re-engineering were the buzzwords. The existing organizational set up and business plans were all the works of domestic homegrown consultants. And not suited for a bank aspiring to go World Class. In these times of Globalization only a global name would work…..so came in McKinsey . Everything looked fine till they started tampering with the nomenclature of the hierarchy. Managing Directors became Chief Officers in their area of responsibility. What a let down!
Meaningless processes and rules-as felt by the consultants- were to be discarded. The Bible of the Bank- the book of instructions, upon which most of us had sworn our allegiance - went into cold storage. Re-Engineering the Corporation took its place. The talk of value-adding the customer, value chains, core competencies, paradigm shift and so on were bandied about. It didn’t matter to these worthies that originators of BPR had moved on to Beyond Re-engineering and the peddler of Core Competencies was toying with core incompetencies. As long as they, yours truly included, mouthed these jargons they were considered moving with the times. The others who still swore by the Book and the traditional banking were considered unfashionable. Well, this was the atmosphere prevailing when I left the bank. In my wildest of dreams did I ever think of revisiting the fad management theories let alone be a most willing participant?. No. But that was what it was to be. That’s the story of another post.
